The business man's place in the economy of nature is to "make money," not to produce goods. The production of goods is a mechanical process, incidental to the making of money; whereas the making of money is a pecuniary operation, carried on by bargain and sale, not by mechanical appliances and powers. The business men make use of the mechanical appliances and powers of the industrial system, but they make a pecuniary use of them. And in point of fact the less use a business man can make of the mechanical appliances and powers under his charge, and the smaller a product he can contrive to turn out for a given return in terms of price, the better it suits his purpose. The highest achievement in business is the nearest approach to getting something for nothing. What any given business concern gains must come out of the total output of productive industry, of course;
and to that extent any given business concern has an interest in the continued production of goods. But the less any given business concern can contrive to give for what it gets, the more profitable its own traffic will be. Business success means "getting the best of the bargain."
The common good, so far as it is a question of material welfare, is evidently best served by an unhampered working of the industrial system at its full capacity, without interruption or dislocation. But it is equally evident that the owner or manager of any given concern or section of this industrial system may be in a position to gain something for himself at the cost of the rest by obstructing, retarding or dislocating this working system at some critical point in such a way as will enable him to get the best of the bargain in his dealings with the rest. This appears constantly in the altogether usual, and altogether legitimate, practice of holding out for a better price. So also in the scarcely less usual, and no less legitimate, practice of withholding needed ground or right of way, or needed materials or information, from a business rival. Indeed it has been rumored that one of the usual incentives which drew the patriotic one-dollar-a-year men from their usual occupations to the service of their country was the chance of controlling information by means of which to "put it over" their business rivals. All these things are usual and a matter of course, because business management under the conditions created by the new order of industry is in great part made up of these things. Sabotage of this kind is indispensable to any large success in industrial business.
But it is also evident that the private gain which the business concerns come in for by this management entails a loss on the rest of the community, and that the loss suffered by the rest of the community is necessarily larger than the total gains which these manoeuvres bring to the business concerns; inasmuch as the friction, obstruction and retardation of the moving equilibrium of production involved in this business-like sabotage necessarily entails a disproportionate curtailment of output.
However, it is well to call to mind that the community will still be able to get along, perhaps even to get along very tolerably, in spite of a very appreciable volume of sabotage of this kind; even though it does reduce the net productive capacity to a fraction of what it would be in the absence of all this interference and retardation; for the current state of the industrial arts is highly productive. So much so that in spite of all this deliberate waste and confusion that is set afoot in this way for private gain, there still is left over an absolutely large residue of net production over cost. The community still has something to go on. The available margin of free income --
that is to say, the margin of production over cost -- is still wide; so that it allows a large latitude for playing fast and loose with the community's livelihood.
Now, these businesslike manoeuvres of deviation and delay are by no means to be denounced as being iniquitous or unfair, although they may have an unfortunate effect on the conditions of life for the common man. That is his misfortune, which law and custom count on his bearing with becoming fortitude. These are the ordinary and approved means of carrying on business according to the liberal principles of free bargain and self-help as established in the eighteenth century; and they are in the main still looked on as a meritorious exercise of thrift and sagacity -- duly so looked on, it is to be presumed. At least such is the prevailing view among the substantial citizens, who are in a position to speak from first-hand knowledge. It is only that the exercise of these homely virtues on the large scale on which business is now conducted, and when dealing with the wide-reaching articulations of the industrial system under the new order of technology, -- under these uncalled-for circumstances the unguarded exercise of these virtues entails business disturbances which are necessarily large, and which bring on mischievous consequences in industry which are disproportionately larger still.
